My First Cancellation

I was an MFA student in Multidisciplinary Art at one of the oldest art schools in the United States, founded in Maryland in 1826. It was my first year living in the United States, having previously only visited as a tourist. Although I had studied English for many years, adapting to everyday habits beyond touristic use took time. My dark sense of humor, along with certain invisible wounds shaped by the Middle East’s collective culture, became more apparent the farther I was from it. I began to feel this lack of acceptance [gradually but unmistakably] in social settings, in the process of forming friendships, and within my academic and artistic production.

You have likely encountered the terms ‘political correctness’, ‘virtue signaling’ or ‘being canceled’ [labels that, while still relatively weak in my origin country Turkey, have rapidly spread within content production, and in the West have reached their peak] whether through social or traditional media. In practice and real life, these concepts resolve nothing sociologically; instead, they fixate on sanitized, non–offensive naming conventions and operate along an axis of “you can’t say that to this person” or “you can’t joke about this”. What emerges is a framework that undermines freedom of expression through a form of social control. In some countries, freedom of thought is restricted by the state/laws; in others, by society. Ironically, in the West, freedom of expression has increasingly become constrained by the certain progressive practices itself; through political correctness, cancel culture, and more recently, Cultural Appropriation.

Cancel Culture, gaining strength alongside political correctness, functions as a form of social surveillance that operates outside legal boundaries. It disregards an individual’s career, social existence, and achievements, aiming instead to erase them through exclusion and humiliation for behaviors deemed ‘inappropriate’. This is not a matter of law, court rulings, or institutional sanctions, but of moral pressure constructed through a collective performance of ‘sensitivity’. Rapidly organized via social media, this reflex judges individuals without granting them a right to defense and [most critically] without attempting to understand what they are actually trying to express. Context is ignored, and judgments are often driven by transient emotional reactions. Political correctness, meanwhile, drifts away from its initial search for inclusive language and transforms into an invisible filter that determines who is allowed to speak and which expressions are considered acceptable.

During my studies, some courses hosted guest artists who commented on our new works. In ways similar to what I later addressed in my text On Invalid Interpretation [though this was my first encounter with it] some of these guest artists offered comments entirely outside the conceptual framework of the works. This stemmed from disciplinary differences, conventional approaches, or simply the lack of time to read the texts. We were accustomed to works being interpreted in multiple ways, but this situation was more akin to fastening the first button of a shirt incorrectly. Once it starts that way, every subsequent button ends up misaligned; as discussions unfolded [about the structure of the class, the text of the work, and audience habits of interpretation] the thread unraveled. Our aim was straightforward: to communicate the work and its production process and rationale, and then to receive any form of critique, harsh or generous, satisfying or unsatisfying. This was a general problem regarding commentary within art institutions.

In a group of friends, we discussed our experiences with guest artists and how effective [or ineffective] their feedback had been. Of roughly six artists, four had understood our practices and offered targeted critiques; one had tried to understand but admitted a sense of disconnection; and one had not read the text at all, interpreting conceptual art as if it were mainstream contemporary or classical art. Their comments veered wildly off course, rendering the organizational effort and time invested meaningless. About this last person, I remarked within the group, “The comments were so irrelevant that I wanted to duct tape that mouth.” Exaggerated illustrations and ‘offensive’ humor are another day’s article topics but even taped, they would have affected the artworks at the same level.

I was still in the first year of a two–year program. A student close to graduation, Daniel, was a devout Catholic. Being an atheist had already complicated my life in Turkey, where I spent the first 35 years of it, but I did not expect similar reactions in the U.S. [especially in the relatively liberal areas where I lived]. As I learned years later, Daniel had repeatedly reported my socio–political/anti–religious works to the administration, requesting their removal. When that failed, he began spreading defamatory claims about me among other students; labeling me a ‘misogynist’ and attaching other accusations likely to resonate with cancel culture dynamics. At the time, I noticed a marked shift in the attitudes of Daniel and some other students who had initially been warm: greetings stopped, distance grew, conversations ceased unless absolutely necessary. I observed these changes but could not make sense of them then, as I was unaware of the complaints and the organized effort behind them.

When these rumors eventually reached me, I saw for the first time how what might be dismissed as ‘gossip’ or ‘smear’ could, when combined with cancel culture, snowball into a form of career assassination. I was familiar with the political pressure in Turkey, the galleries refusing to show my work, the various forms of negative evaluation. But this was different: it functioned as a social and career–oriented attack. Friends distanced themselves for reasons they never shared, curators I had been in contact with cut off communication, people who once greeted me stopped speaking, and some academics displayed a sudden, 180–degree shift in behavior [clear indicators that something was wrong].

I have never been concerned with being liked or accepted at any point in my career; that freedom allowed me to create limitlessly and to articulate positions other artists avoided. At that moment, it was less “They don’t like me” and more “Let’s identify the cause of this blockage”. Partly a matter of clarity, partly sociological curiosity. Daniel had taken a remark I made within a small group [about a dark humor saying — taping the mouth of an artist whose comments were irrelevant] and turned it into a rumor branding me a misogynist, as the artist was a woman. This narrative spread unchallenged within politically correct circles, pushing right up against my personal boundaries. Out of my fourteen solo exhibitions, two explicitly critiqued patriarchal violence targeting women’s rights and the narrowing of life spaces for LGBTQ+ individuals. Anyone glancing at my website > exhibitions or Instagram past, could have seen the rumor was spread maliciously. The smear was profoundly disconnected from who I was. Those who believed it simply chose to attach an unfounded, negative story they had heard about a foreign student, without any interest in verifying it. It was not racial prejudice [against me — I was certain of that] but a failure to comprehend different worlds that I criticize oppressions via religion in the world. Daniel, meanwhile, had long since crossed the point of no return: repeatedly reporting my works critiquing autocracy and religion, fabricating detailed interpretations, and actively inciting academics, students, and curators against me.

What I experienced was, in its specific and limited form, a small–scale cancellation via context manipulation. Even so, it cost me numerous social environments, several unrealized exhibitions, a localized bad reputation, and a lasting distance from certain academics with whom professional exchange would no longer be possible. If we are to speak sincerely about freedom of expression, we must acknowledge that as long as this freedom is subject to any practical, social, or legal restriction, it will remain fundamentally unattainable.